Gaza refugees in France pained over losing loved ones not allowed to evacuate

Rennes, France — AFP

When Israeli air strikes hit his neighbourhood early on in the war on Gaza, Palestinian social worker Tareq Abu Eita, 42, saw his whole life upended in seconds.

The vicious Israeli bombardment on October 14 blew in the walls of his two-storey family home.

It killed his 77-year-old father Hamed, his wife of 15 years Muntaha, 37, and his 11-year-old son Ilyas.

It also took the lives of his two nieces, eight-year-old Mira and 14-year-old Tala.

“It’s all gone,” said Abu Eita, a tear streaming down his cheek in the French city of Rennes, after showing pictures of his wedding and late son grinning on his phone.

He and another son, 14-year-old Fares, are among just a handful of Palestinians wounded in the war who have been flown over to France for specialised medical treatment.

Israel’s genocidal offensive has killed at least 39,550 people, most of them children and women.

“It’s not just numbers,” said Abu Eita.

“Every one of these human beings had their loved ones, their family, their memories.”

He and his son Fares were outside their home in the northern Jabalia refugee camp after receiving a water delivery when the strikes hit, and were both badly wounded.

Fares suffered a large skull fracture that plunged him into a coma for more than three weeks.

– ‘Going through hell’ –

Nine months on, with Israeli forces still pounding the ravaged Gaza Strip, both are recovering in France following extensive medical care.

But Abu Eita is terrified he could now also lose two other sons he was forced to leave behind without a mother in the besieged territory: 10-year-old Jud and 15-year-old Ahmad.

“It’ll be a disaster if anything happens to them,” the father said.

“I really couldn’t cope.”

Abu Eita says he has been promised that as soon as he is granted asylum, he will be able to apply to bring his children to France.

But he is still waiting, leaving him with too much time to agonise about the impossible choice he made.

“Fares was dying. If I had stayed, I would have lost him,” he said.

Israel’s offensive has wounded more than 91,000 people since October 7, with no medical facilities operational in the battered territory.

Around 10 children in Gaza every day lose one or both legs, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees says.

Aspiring soccer player Asef Abu Mhadi, 12, is one of them.

He says he was playing football outside his home in the central Nuseirat refugee camp on October 16 when his neighbourhood was hit, reducing it to rubble.

“I thought there was debris on my leg,” he told the media, sitting in a wheelchair with a Palestinian football scarf over his shoulder near a Paris suburb hospital.

“I sat up to remove it and I discovered my leg was severed.”

Asef was also flown to France for treatment with his mother Raja Abdulkarim Abu Mhadi.

But Abu Mhadi, a 47-year-old who lost her husband when Asef was an infant, was not allowed to bring her other five children — Enas, 13, Aisha, 15, Ahmad, 17, Moayed, 18, and Mohammad, 20.

The mother, who says she has lost three nephews in the war, is also wracked with worry as she waits.

“My children are going through hell and I’m terrified I’m going be told I’ve lost them,” she said.

She added that her son, who has been deeply depressed, could not heal properly without his siblings.

The French foreign ministry says it has evacuated almost 300 people from Gaza since the war started, including 15 wounded Palestinian children and their chaperones.

But it added that, if some family members have not been able to come to France, it was not linked to asylum requests.

It was “either because they have not been allowed to by the Israeli authorities” or because the Rafah border crossing from Gaza into Egypt “has been closed since May”, it said.